Upgrading or updating your floors can be a really amazing experience. It can change the entire look of a space or an entire house, it can allow you to have more comfortability, coziness in the room, keep noise from traveling throughout the house and let’s be honest, flooring is also present for another reason – change. Changing the look, the feel, and the overall design of the room. But, when it comes to flooring there are so many different options available. How do you choose? Well for a lot of people it comes down to cost / look. Below we will be talking about the most common types of flooring used in a home; benefits and disadvantages, as well as costs that you can expect from each floor type.

In ALL of these instances, we will be using 3 rooms. The first room will be 12×16, the second room will be 32×30 and the last room will be 15×18.

Tile Flooring – Porcelain or Ceramic

This type of tile flooring is mostly seen in entryways or even kitchens. The best things about porcelain tile flooring that it’s pretty strong in terms of durability – though it can crack if someone drops something heavy on it, it’s pretty easy to install yourself, and the amount of color and design options is really unlimited. The biggest issues are, as mentioned, that it can crack and when this happens it can be a real pain to replace. Also, porcelain or ceramic floors are really hard and cold under your feet. Let say you select porcelain for your kitchen to make sure that you add some sort of a mat because your feet and legs will be hurting from standing on it for too long.

Cost For 3 Rooms using Tile Flooring

Perhaps this wasn’t the cost you were expecting. Well, that’s okay! This was a mid ranged tile, but there is also a lower ranged one as well – it’s not as strong as the mid range, but it’s moderately cheaper. Also, you have to consider that this was the cost for THREE rooms, while as mentioned earlier this is most commonly used in entryways and kitchens.

Hardwood Flooring

Benefits: Obviously hardwood flooring looks and feels amazing. It just has a sort of aesthetic appeal to it that you expect from wood. It’s also made from hardwood trees so you know it’s going to be incredibly strong and durable and it’s going to last for years to come. In some cases, people have their wood floors for a century. But, they can be finicky. You have to make sure you sand them down once in awhile, you have to make sure that you use a proper sealer. And you really have to make sure that you clean them properly. That’s to be expected with any material though right? Well, another negative to hardwood is that it can be quite expensive and I think you will see how expensive in this next part versus the next material.

Cost For 3 Rooms using Hardwood flooring

Once you start adding more rooms on, and then you add a higher grade of wood, this can go up quite a bit. Think somewhere in the $25k to $40k range for an entire house.

Vinyl Flooring

Vinyl flooring has been around for what seems like forever and can be used as good alternative flooring as well. It was mostly used as sheets – you would then just cut around the areas where they needed cut and lay it down using an adhesive. But, these days you can also find tiles of vinyl. The tiles can be used with or without grout. The vinyl is commonly used in rooms like the bathroom and the kitchen because it’s impervious to moisture and water, it cannot crack, it cannot be cut (accidentally!) and it doesn’t fade. However, it still does have that vinyl look to it no matter how creative you get with the colors or patterns. Vinyl flooring is said to be an inexpensive choice.

Cost For 3 Rooms using Vinyl Sheets Flooring

Bet that’s not the price you expected huh? Well, you have to consider all the benefits. Besides aesthetics, it really is a good flooring option to consider!

Carpeting For Flooring

Carpeting is a really popular option in homes. But, I think most people can agree that unlike wood that can go in almost every room, carpet cannot. You don’t want carpet in the kitchen or in the bathroom. First off, it’s just gross (sorry!), second off, it can lead to bacterial issues and third off, can you imagine the mess? It would be horrendous. But, people do tend to put carpet in every other part of their house. Carpet lends color variations; almost any color you can imagine, it’s available. It allows softness and comfort for you and your kids to lay down on or sit on. And it is pretty easy to clean, right? Well. Sometimes.

Carpet can become harder to clean over time. Once you start to remove the manufacturers staining chemicals on the carpet by using a carpet cleaner on it, eventually the carpet becomes less and less “stain resistant.” Foods, liquids, and other things just can’t be removed anymore. Also, carpet can lead to asthma and allergies – not only the chemicals on their own, but carpets trap-in dust. If you’ve ever taken a lamp and brushed your hand over your carpet – you would see a million tiny dust particles flying into the air even if you are a VERY clean person. Because of this, some people choose not to go the carpet route and instead go for one of the other options here.

Cost For 3 Rooms using Carpet

Much cheaper than wood, yes. But, is it really worth it? That’s something that you and only you can decide on.

Laminate Floating Flooring

This is a big trend right now and with good reason. It’s wood, actually, it’s plywood that has been sandwiched together using adhesives. It might not sound like a quality material, but it is, which is why it’s so popular. It’s incredibly beautiful, comes in all sorts of stains, it looks, feels and acts like real hardwood at the fraction of the price, and it’s a floating floor which means no exhaustive installations steps, no nails, heck you don’t even have to use adhesives if you don’t want to and you don’t have to rip up your under floor! This should be treated like wood though. It can get damaged if there is standing water in the room. If you use this in the kitchen make sure your kitchen is in tip top shape.

Cost For 3 Rooms using Laminate Flooring

Considering this is the one that looks and feels the most like the hardwood above, I would say that there is a huge difference between that $11k versus the $18k for the wood.

All of these flooring materials are good; look good, feel good, etc. The one you choose is really going to depend on cost. Isn’t that what most decisions come down to? If you really want wood, but you don’t have the budget, really think about looking into the wood laminates. Go to a local company where you can actually see what it looks and feels like in order to really appreciate this material. On the other hand, if you want something super cheap, as you can see above from the price points, carpet will most likely be the best option for you. While you are saving money on materials, make sure that you at least purchase quality carpet.